Who would believe that a position conducting studies on mice and the function of T-cells in tumor development would lead to a career as an intellectual property attorney?
Dara Onofrio would. She”™s the Grand View-on-Hudson resident who made the transition more than 20 years ago and conducts most of her business from a Nyack office.
The Rockland County/New York City attorney prides herself that “my clients have a direct line to me. I never wanted to be in a big firm. My clients don”™t have to deal with junior associates.
“I have worn many hats,” she says of her career, which currently covers patent and trademark matters and copyright protection. “But each early experience led me to my present career in which I feel at home.
“I was the second eldest child and the eldest daughter in an Italian-American family of six children. Our father was a school superintendent, but we still had to manage to finance our own way through college. I had desperately wanted to go to medical school. I earned a B. S. degree in Chemistry cum laude from Southern Connecticut State University. I got through the four-year program in three years.”
While at the university, she studied both Russian and Italian. She then completed special science studies at Yale University and graduate studies in molecular biology at Cornell University. But, despite her impressive credentials, medical school was not in the cards.
That did not preclude her being employed by prestigious organizations, including Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, working in both the developmental genetics and the somatic cell genetics departments. Her background in science has served her well, she believes, in dealing with inventors seeking patents.
Choosing a law career, she financed her education while supervising 200 sales people at Bloomingdale”™s in New York City and putting herself through Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University.
Between studies she was awarded a scholarship for art and art history to the University of Urbino, Italy, which she terms “the birthplace of the Renaissance,” and also spent a semester at the Cambridge University in England studying international law.
She went out on her own 10 years ago after spending a decade with a major Manhattan law firm. Her move to Rockland County was prompted by her being haunted by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. “I was late getting to my office in the Woolworth Building that day and when I got there my assistant was in tears after watching people jump from the burning towers.”
She still retains a Manhattan presence, but the bulk of her work is done from her Rockland County office.
Her clients involve her in many fields of endeavor, including authors, film producers and inventors of bottle designs, medical/pharmaceutical formulations, orthopedic devices, school supplies and doll designs.
To illustrate the complexity of the patent world, she points to biotechnology patents. In order to receive a patent for agents and treatments for cancer and other diseases, it must have novel characteristics and typically involves DNA sequencing, she says.
Onofrio is a registered patent attorney with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and a member of the New York state and Connecticut bars. She is admitted to practice before the U.S. District Court”™s Southern and Eastern Districts of New York, and the U.S. Supreme Court.
She has been village justice for Grand View-on-Hudson for more than seven years, is executive vice president of the Rockland Business Women”™s Network, was a founding member of Homeland Security and has been a staff officer in Division 10 and a member of Flotilla 10-04 of the U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary.
Challenging Careers focuses on the exciting and unusual business lives of Hudson Valley residents. Comments or suggestions may be e-mailed to Catherine Portman-Laux at cplaux@optonline.net.
